3. What sort of work does a Localization team do, and what does Square do differently?.

A normal team is given a product. People, usually the client himself alongside his translators, debate a little on what content will be changed so that everything goes smoothly. Though it's possible it doesn't always happen, can't always keep track of every change. The project is then divided into strings (for text) and stuff like images and sounds for editors. They are given manuals and term bases and other resources to keep consistency and there's one guy, the Project Manager, who oversees the overall quality and the team's efforts. Once it's done and has been reviewed, they then take to test out the product to make sure their work didn't break something. It's then approved, sent to the client for final approval and it's shipped to you. This is a generalized thing.

SE has this on an internal level, but due to what I said on #2, likely has more creative freedom. For all intents and purposes, what they do is take the base game and the established plot, but rework it in a way that both makes sense for English players, but also has the flavour that their Project Manager decided it should have. This PM is Koji Fox, who HAS said freedom to do this.

In essence, they make "two games in one". Though they are very much similar, Koji Fox being so involked allows him to add some colour to his English version. Hence all the flourishes, vague mentions, prosaic speech and differences from the original text. And memes. Lots of memes.

Keep in mind that this is likely known by the dev team and they gave his approval, as long as he doesn't go overboard. Which he doesn't, he just makes stuff be flowery and hard to get, or changes the emotion of other parts.

You do still get the exact same product Japan got, but with a hint of nuance that wasn't there.

4. Okay but why are FR and DE different than EN?

Because Koji Fox likely only knows English and Japanese. He doesn't know French nor German, so he gives it to an external team. This external team will be given the original product, and while they will also do some changes to the product, they won't be as marked as the ones the English team was allowed to do.

This has also led to some bit of trouble where they likely didn't test out the product as they should, leading to some spoilery leak about Hrothgar in the French translation back in Stormblood. Different teams, under different managements, will work with different timescales and permissions. And thus, since we don't have a memelord in FR or DE, the amount of text changes and additions that EN finds charming is likely to be far lower. With this, however, comes the added bonus of the text being more faithful to the original.